Visa Inc. has announced a deal to promote e-commerce around the world in time for holiday shopping.
Visa plans a series of promotions with two online shopping services: Brussels-based Borderlinx, which is available in 12 countries, and Miami-based SkyBOX, which is offered in more than 40 countries in Latin America.
Visa says its partnership with the two e-commerce sites will facilitate product shipments from U.S.-based retailers and is part of Visa’s efforts to make international online shopping with credit and debit cards easier for consumers and more profitable for merchants, according to a statement.
“One inhibitor to the growth of cross-border e-commerce is the delivery of goods,” Gerry Sweeney, global head of e-commerce and authentication, said in a statement, noting that buying from U.S.-based online merchants has been costly and logistically complicated for international customers. “We partner with logistic service providers like Borderlinx and SkyBOX to remove obstacles to cross-border e-commerce transactions by enabling international Visa cardholders to shop online and purchase from thousands of U.S.-based retail stores that wouldn’t normally ship overseas.”
Visa cardholders in countries such as Australia, Bahrain, China and Qatar can register for free with Borderlinx to shop at thousands of online merchants’ sites from the U.S. and UK. Through SkyBOX, Visa cardholders in Latin America and the Caribbean can register for free to shop at online U.S. merchants. Both e-commerce sites provide shoppers with a personalized U.S. shipping address to which a retailer can mail purchased items. Both sites then arrange for these items to be shipped to the cardholder’s home country.
Visa is running special giveaways and discounts for cardholders to promote the two services. Borderlinx also is offering a 10% savings in select countries, while SkyBOX is offering at $10 discount on each cardholder’s first order.
Steve Jacowitz, managing director at Auriemma Consulting Group, says it’s a good play for Visa to promote international e-commerce. “This is really just an extension of leveraging the infrastructure support here for countries that don’t have that infrastructure,” he says, noting that it’s good to enable cardholders to have broader access to online retailers to promote e-commerce. He notes that overall e-commerce sales are growing upwards of 30-40% annually.
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